Sunday, March 15, 2009

Freebie! Followers know I write on Tuesdays (usually), but I thought you might enjoy a little smidgen of a story...

On Thursday, I waited at home for our beautiful new freezer to arrive. The delivery people said they'd come sometime between noon and four, as delivery people often do.

Around 12:30 p.m. Bridgette goes down for a nap. To prevent the dogs from barking and waking her when the freezer men knock on the front door, I put them in the backyard.

Around 3:00 p.m. the freezer people knock. I ask them to wheel the freezer through the side gate, so they can put it in the basement by way of our walk-out entrance in the backyard. I say, "Please wait a moment while I unlock the gate."

Baby is still *gasp* asleep, and being an attempted good mommy, I lock the front door, so she'll be safe while I'm out back for a few minutes.

I go through the garage door into the backyard, wrangle the pups into the garage so they won't disturb the baby inside or the delivery men outside, then I unlock the gate.

The freezer people come through. They take the freezer to the basement door which, of course, is still locked. So I go back inside to unlock it.

But wait! There's a problem. The garage door locked behind me, so now we are all neatly partitioned. Baby is locked in the house. Dogs are locked in the garage. Mommy is locked out.

This is the first time I have locked myself out of anything.

I panic. Softly. First I go to the neighbors and borrow a cell phone. I call our friends down the street who have a spare key. No answer. I call my parents-in-law who have a spare key. No answer.

I panic a little more loudly and consider kicking in a window. But instead I call the police. 9-1-1 to be exact. I would have called the less "emergency" police number, but if you'll recall, I'm locked out and don't have a phonebook.

I think of my baby. If we're lucky, maybe she's still asleep. But maybe she's awake and hungry! Or, maybe she's awake and crying so hard she's dehydrating!! Or, maybe she's finally learned to roll-over and... and... walk at the exact same moment and she's currently scaling her crib to get to the Windex under the bathroom counter!!!

I casually get the mail and pretend to read it while waiting for a policeman to arrive. He does, and I ask if he picks locks. "No," he says, "But I do crawl in windows. Did you leave any open?"

Now, I admit, not everything in my brain has been working at top notch since this unplanned separation from my baby. But if a window had been opened, I would already be inside.

"No," I answer. "There are no open windows." Actually, it's much worse, there are no unlocked windows either. All the deadbolts are locked too, except the one on the garage door.

He asks me if I've tried to open it with a credit card. Umm... no. Ok. I can see why he asked if I had any open windows. I didn't even THINK about trying a credit card. But now that I was thinking about it, I realized they were all locked in the house.

He pulls out his wallet and fishes for a card flexible enough to do the trick.

Now remember, the dogs are in the garage. I warn him. I really do. "I have two dogs who are locked in the garage, and they've never been any trouble, but they don't know you, so I feel you should know."

I'm glad I said something.

The policeman picks the lock, and Chewy, my Border Collie mix -- the bigger, deeper voiced, more daunting of the two -- sees a man with a gun, takes one look at me, and decides it's a party. He leaps on us, gives me a kiss, notices the open gate, and opts to go exploring.

I'd stop him, but Piper, my Sheltie -- the small, adorable, fuzzy pup everyone loves -- has turned into a Rottweiler trained to kill. She decides it is NOT ok that a large armed stranger is breaking into our home. She decides that although I tell her it's ok, I am wrong.

No one dies. That is the happy outcome of this story.

Oh, and we got a freezer.

Epilogue:

The delivery men had to leave the freezer outside because, well, the doors were all locked. But Jeff and I wrestled it in when he got home from work. It is now filled with Costco goodies... like excessively large bags of frozen green beans.

When I rushed into baby's nursery, I found her awake and playing happily in her crib.

The dogs were overly excited the rest of the day. If you know my dogs, you are thinking right now that this is quite normal.

The policeman drove off before I could thank him, and I hope he felt like a hero when he went home to dinner that night.

I don't know what to write...I am laughing too hard!(of course only because everything turned out alright). Reminds me of the time I locked the kids in the car and I was screaming at the top of my lungs through the window trying to get Miriam to get herself out of her car seat so she could unlock the doors. I'm sure the whole townhouse complex could hear me. Good memories!

That is a funny story. We have a locksmith less than a block away. I hope I remember that when and if I lock myself out of the house.And hopefully the kids aren't inside.Charles is prone to closing doors and is teaching his sister to also. Hopefully I remember to unlock all the doors I go out of.

hahaha...now that's an entertaining story. I haven't locked myself out of the house...knock on wood, but I have locked the keys in the trunk of the car when I threw the groceries in. Thank goodness I still had my cell with me and also Brayden in the basket. Whew!

(My only story that compares is the time I was babysitting my friends kids. One was asleep and the other (3 yrs.)wanted to go next door to see his friend. We went next door, came back a few minutes later, and found the front door locked! I dragged him around the house looking for unlocked doors, and luckily the sliding glass door was unlocked!)

HA! Great story - and I'm glad everything turned out OK. And I'm very impressed with how you handled it. A friend of mine locked herself out of the house last winter with her baby inside and she freaked out and threw a concrete block through her back window!!